Infected Houses and Sanitized Spaces: Architecture, Adaptive Reuse, and Tourism of the Early 20th Century Tubercular Era

dc.contributor.advisor West, Carroll
dc.contributor.author Stout, Jenna
dc.contributor.committeemember Hoffschwelle, Mary
dc.contributor.committeemember Martin, Christopher
dc.contributor.committeemember Pruitt, Lisa
dc.contributor.department History en_US
dc.date.accessioned 2017-05-26T17:30:54Z
dc.date.available 2017-05-26T17:30:54Z
dc.date.issued 2017-02-14
dc.description.abstract In turn-of-the-century America, tuberculosis (TB) served as a palpable threat to the public. The “infected house theory” posited that tuberculosis infected the actual fabric of buildings, attaching further stigma and public health concerns to sanatoria, boardinghouses, and other architecture that housed consumptives. The razing of sanatoria represented an effort to make way for new housing, cleansed of the stigma of disease. Other spaces were adaptively reused, undergoing a sanitization. Through an architectural and material culture-based approach, this dissertation explores the process by which TB architecture shifted from perceived contaminated to sanitized spaces. It also discusses ways to interpret the forgotten white plague at historical sites with sun parlors, sun rooms, and sleeping porches in the South.
dc.description.abstract Tuberculosis histories rarely look beyond the sanatorium. Yet, given that the majority of consumptives never saw the inside of a sanatorium, the tubercular architecture landscape largely consisted of constructed sickroom spaces tacked onto domestic buildings. This dissertation is a regional study on the tuberculosis sanatorium movement and architecture in the South. It contextualizes sleeping porches, boardinghouses, and tent cottages within the larger sanatorium movement. As a work of public history, this study further focuses on the preservation, adaptive reuse, and interpretation of consumptive spaces. Case studies shed light on how different sites deal with their consumptive legacy. These sites illuminate how health and disease can be interpreted and serve as a template for public historians.
dc.description.degree Ph.D.
dc.identifier.uri http://jewlscholar.mtsu.edu/xmlui/handle/mtsu/5272
dc.publisher Middle Tennessee State University
dc.subject Boardinghouse
dc.subject Consumptive Housing
dc.subject Health Tourism
dc.subject Sleeping Porch
dc.subject Sunroom
dc.subject Tuberculosis
dc.subject.umi American history
dc.subject.umi Architecture
dc.subject.umi Public health
dc.thesis.degreegrantor Middle Tennessee State University
dc.thesis.degreelevel Doctoral
dc.title Infected Houses and Sanitized Spaces: Architecture, Adaptive Reuse, and Tourism of the Early 20th Century Tubercular Era
dc.type Dissertation
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